Jadey
by bouncingclowns
Summary: "Jade West's hair was the color auburn— light and delicate, like autumnal leaves. Like her mother's used to be. After she left, her father would knit his fingers through her curls, and look at her like he was waiting for answers to unspoken questions. He looked at her like he was looking at her mother, like he was trying to find solace in their similarities. So she dyed it black."


Her mother used to call her 'Jadey', but it's a name she hadn't heard since she was maybe twelve. A term of endearment at it's origins, but oh how it made her skin crawl now. He started calling her that once she left, and he started drinking. It came as a jibe every time, a low wail for what was, and what would never be again. It was a reminder of the family she'd lost, and the father she had. She hated it. She hated him.

Jade West's hair was the color auburn— light and delicate, like autumnal leaves. Like her mother's used to be. After she left, her father would knit his fingers through her curls, and look at her like he was waiting for answers to unspoken questions. He looked at her like he was looking at her mother, like he was trying to find solace in their similarities. So she dyed it black.

Her friends hadn't seen her father since her play, since before her mom packed up her 2015 Honda Accord and skipped town with some guy half her age named Tag. The Michael West they knew was a stoic, stale statistician who hated the arts, and who didn't understand his daughter — not that he ever tried.

Two of those things remained true.

He had been out of work for almost a year and a half. Jade picked up shifts at a local diner after school to help out. Her father would take the money, and she wouldn't see it again. She wasn't sure where it went, but she was almost positive at least half of it fueled his fast growing drinking habit. Jade had always feared her father, but before it had been a fear of never earning his approval. When he drank, it was different. When he drank, she feared what he was capable of. He had never hurt her physically, but on more than one occasion she had come home to verbal beatdowns, and plates being thrown inches from her body only to shatter on the wall. One time he aimed a little too close, and it earned her six stitches on her left shoulder. When Robbie had asked what happened at school the next day, all it took was her most sinister glare, and the conversation was over before it had even begun.

She hadn't intended on telling him about her mother's absence, but when he happened in on the diner she started working at well past midnight a few months ago, Jade figured she didn't have a choice. He had been understanding almost to a fault - holding her hand, expecting her to cry. In true Jade fashion, she played it off as though he was overreacting, as though he was making something out of nothing. Secretly, though, Beck knew she was grateful to have someone to talk to.

* * *

Jade's cousin had given her a fake I.D. for her sixteenth birthday, but she never used it. Not because she was scared of getting caught — she knew she passed as a believable twenty-one year old (she'd been hit on by enough college guys to be sure about that). She just had never been interested in drinking.

The night she and Beck broke up, Jade didn't go home like she'd assured him she would. Instead, she just drove around for hours. She thought about her mother — thought what it must have been like to pick up and leave, to start over, to be free. Jade hated and envied her at the same time, and had a million questions she wished she could ask her. Questions on how to move on, how to learn to forget — topics she knew her mother was an expert on, because how else could she have just left her here? Her mind wandered to Beck. She knew he was over at Tori's, playing cards, and supported, and fucking … just … "UGH!" Jade scoffed, gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles went white. She knew this would happen. She knew that if they broke up, he would get the friends, and the sympathy, and what would she get? Nothing.

'Maybe if you didn't act like such a freak all the time, people would like you more…' her fathers words rang in her ears, 'no one wants to be friends with a girl who looks like ... that.'

Jade felt the hair on the back of her neck rise, and her chest start to tighten. She turned the radio on full blast to drown out the sound of her own thoughts. Jade checked the dash of her car: 2:30 am. Then something else caught her eye. Gas tank low. She groaned.

It was another fifteen minutes before she finally came across a gas station on a street she had definitely never been down before. It was small and dingy, not that it mattered to Jade where she got gas. When the tank was full, she went to put her card in the chip reader, only to find the machine broken. Jade groaned again, kicking the side of her silver car hard enough to leave a black scuff where the toe of her Dr. Martens boot made contact.

The interior of the minimart stretched in front of her like a florescent funeral procession. Jade's eyes darted between aisles of candies, chips, microwavable meals, and magazines. The back wall was covered in industrial refrigerators containing an assortment of bottled sodas, energy drinks, and, yes, alcohol. Jade fidgeted nervously with her wallet before storming to the register.

"Pump two." She snapped, slamming the receipt on the counter.

The boy at the register didn't look up, just snatched the receipt and punched the numbers into the register. "That's thirty," he drawled, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his red polyester shirt. His eyes linked with Jades, and she thought she could practically see his prepubescent brain implode on itself. "A-anything else?"

Jade rolled her eyes and the feeble attempt at flirting, and she was about to say no, when something in her faltered. "Um … actually, one sec." She muttered, stalking off towards the refrigerators.

She stopped short when she got there, her heart stuttering for a moment. Jade had never drank before, let alone bought alcohol. Her finger traced the fogged plastic of the refrigerator door, before she swinging it open. A gust of icy air hit her mouth and nose, and Jade's shoulders tensed. She peeked back at the boy behind the counter who was watching her dreamily. If I take too long, he'll know something's up, she thought as she scanned the contents of the fridge once more.

She had never realized there were so many types of alcohol. Her father stuck to either beer or vodka straight from the handle, but there were different colors, and brands, and flavors, and —

Jade shook her head and reached for a six pack labeled Smirnoff Ice - Strawberry. She recognized the name from one of the handles hidden all around her house, and she liked strawberries. Couldn't be too bad, right?

"I.D.?" The boy swooned as she placed the cardboard box on the table.

Jade rolled her eyes again, before rummaging through her wallet for the fake Connecticut license. She found it hidden behind her Hollywood Arts I.D., and slid it across the counter. The boy let his fingers linger long enough for the two of them to make contact. Jade snatched her hand back.

"Touch me again, and I'll turn your hand into a flower vase." She snarled.

The boy jumped, his eyes bulging out of their sockets as he nodded fervently. They didn't speak after that.

She found an abandoned warehouse a couple miles from the gas station, and put the car in park. It was a beautiful night, and as much as she hated that, it did give her an excuse to sit on the hood of her car. Jade twisted the cap off, flicking it a couple inches in front of her car. She examined the bottle for a moment. The contents of the glass container were sickly red, and she could only imagined tasted like cough syrup. She sniffed the top, then slowly brought the bottle to her lips and took a swig. The alcohol burned as it slid down her throat, but the strawberry flavoring masked it enough to make it bearable. Bearable enough for her to take another sip, and another, and another, and another, and …

It didn't take long for her to empty the first bottle, and for her stomach to warm and slosh with its newfound contents. Jade reached through the car window on her passenger side and pulled out another bottle. This time, she didn't wait before bringing the saturnine liquid to her lips and downing it. She only stopped when she ran out of breath, slamming the bottle down next to her on the car hood, and wiping the spilt dribble from her chin.

Her vision swayed slightly in front of her, but she liked it. But she didn't like that she liked it. But she also didn't care. Not tonight, at least. She thought about her father, and wondered how old he was the first time he drank, wondered if he had been as scared as she was, and if he had liked it too? A few more gulps and the second bottle was finished, and any coherent thought she might've had was consumed by an uncomfortable buzzing in her skull. Jade went to grab another bottle from her passenger seat, but her hand slipped on the corner of the hood, and she toppled to the ground instead.

Jade hissed when the palms of her hands and knees made contact with the cement, before crumpling to her side. Her limbs felt heavy, her head muddled. She did not like being drunk, she decided, but there was nothing she could do to change it now. Slowly, she staggered upwards and reached through the window once more, this time succeeding in catching hold of her third bottle. She swayed as she stood, her fingers fumbling with the twist-off lid. When she finally opened the bottle and bought it to her lips once more, she heard an awful gurgling noise coming from her stomach. She ignored it, tilting the bottle back and swallowing hard.

* * *

She didn't remember falling asleep that night, she barely remembered finishing the third bottle. Jade opened her eyes slowly, squinting hard against the early morning light. A heavy throbbing protruded just behind her eyes all the way to the base of her skull, and she could smell something foul. Jade chanced opening her eyes fully to find herself lying half next to, half on top of a pile of vomit by the side of her car. She jumped, pulling herself upwards and slamming her head on the car door.

"Fuck!" She seethed, bringing a hand to the back of her already throbbing head.

Jade pulled her knees to her chest and let her forehead rest there, trying desperately to drown out the sound of her own thoughts. Slowly, she pulled herself upwards by way of the open car window, and peeked through the door. Her phone lay haphazardly on the ground by the now more than half empty six pack from the night before. She cringed, averting her eyes back to her cellphone and pressing the home button. The fluorescent light it gave off hurt more than that of the world around her, but she forced herself to check the time. It was almost 6:30 am, and she had four missed calls from her father.

"Fuck." She hissed again, swinging herself back out the car window and trudging to the driver's side of the car. Her keys were still in the ignition, and she turned them, shuttering as the sound of the engine pierced through the fog in her head.

The drive home was a nightmare. Jade stopped thrice to hurl on the side of the highway. Her body felt like it had been put through a wood chipper and then glued back together. Never again, she thought, gritting her teeth as she a car horn sounded one lane over.

She pulled into her driveway an hour and a half later, killing the ignition and letting her head come to rest on the steering wheel. Jade groaned for the umpteenth time that morning, gripping the wheel as she tried to make the world stop spinning. Her cousin had told regaled her with stories of drunken parties and adventures — he had never explained to her that the morning after would feel like this. A knock on her window pulled her out of her thoughts, and she looked up to see her father looming over her. Another groan, and she opened the door, swinging her legs onto the gravel.

"You didn't come home." He croaked, his hands opening and closing beside him.

Jade looked up sheepishly, pulling a few wisps of hair off her face and tucking them behind her ear. "I …"

"Didn't come home, didn't call, I thought you'd—" He faltered, his face twisting into something vile. "Where were you?"

Jade lowered her gaze to her boots, digging the heels into the gravel until she hit the damp clay beneath. "Out." She mumbled.

Michael West examined his daughter with unsteady eyes, before a flash of something bright caught his eye behind her. He whipped around, jamming the passenger door open and pulling out the practically empty six pack. Jade winced in spite of herself as he held it up triumphantly.

"You've been drinking." He condemned.

Jade stood, slamming her hands on the roof of the car. "So have you."

"Out all night drinking, you don't call, you don't text." He chastised, his lips pulling into a sinister smile. "You're seventeen years old, Jadey."

"Don't call me that." Jade snapped, pushing off the car and breezing off towards the house.

Before she could open the front door of the white, Tudor style house, she felt a hand on her forearm yanking her backwards. "We're not done. Did I say we were done?" Her father fumed, pulling his daughter up against his chest.

Jade's chest tightened when she smelt the alcohol on his breath, but she never let her face fall. She struggled against his grip, and then in a moment of sheer genius, jammed her knee between his legs. The Smirnoff case fell to the ground, and so did he. Jade sprinted into the house, slamming the door behind her before sauntering up the stairs into her room and slamming that door too. She pressed her back against the door, panting lightly. God all she wanted to do was lie down, but the movement had made her nauseous again and she ran to her bathroom, forgetting to lock the bedroom door behind her. She heard it fling open after a second round of bile rose in her throat.

"Damnit, Jadey!" Her father's voice boomed over the sound of her own gagging.

* * *

Tori didn't think anything of it when Jade isn't at school the next day. She thinks about when her and Daniel broke up, and how her mother had given her ice cream in bed and all but forced her to stay home.

"Just for today." She'd winked, placing the heaping bowl of chocolate and whipped cream down in front of her before closing Tori's bedroom door. She'd had spent the majority of day in bed, drowning her misery in ice cream and stupid teen TV shows, and by the end she did feel better.

Just as her mother had promised.

The multi-toned bell rings, and she's pulled out of her thoughts. After grabbing the last of her textbooks and cramming them into her purple backpack, she swiveled on her heels only to land practically on top of Andre. The boy smiles cheekily, shifting his own knapsack farther onto his shoulder.

"Music theory." He offers, and Tori takes it as his way of asking where she's headed.

She smiles back at him. "Contemporary Vocal Styles!"

They part ways without another word spoken. Tori loves her Contemporary Vocal Styles class (or CVS as the students of Hollywood Arts lovingly call it), because the teacher, Mr. Kerrick, loves her, and because Beck is in it with her. She loves it even more today because Jade will not be in it. If Tori were to be completely honest with herself, there's a small part of her that's relieved the two of them aren't dating anymore beyond her concerns as a mere friend. She had never understood what Beck saw in Jade. She was angry, and cruel. Jade was pretty, sure, and Tori could only assume that part of her appeal was her performance in bed, but Beck was ... well ...

He was Beck. Kind, and gentle, and fucking beautiful. And Tori just ... didn't ... get it.

She sauntered into the classroom, greeting Mr. Kerrick as she did. Mr. Kerrick was a gentle, jolly man with too much energy and too many extra pounds on his body - the type of teacher whose more excited about what he's teaching than he is about his life outside of the classroom. It made for an awesome class, and an incredibly awkward professor.

Tori plopped down next to Beck in the front row, pulling out a notebook and pen and writing the date and the unit. They were working on country, and she had a song that she knew would be perfect. It was only when she smiled at Beck that she looked at him for the first time that day. Beck's hair was a mess - not his usual, "I'm too cool to care" disheveled, but matted and messy and unkempt. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, and it looked like he hadn't changed since she'd seen him the night before.

"Hey." Tori tried, keeping her tone cheery, but soft.

"Hey." He mumbled in response, keeping his dark, brooding eyes fixed on a spot on the wall.

She swung her knees towards him. "I thought you'd be happy that ... you know who isn't here today!"

Beck sighed heavily and flicked his eyes towards the all-too-perky brunette. In Tori's world, once something ended, it was over. It didn't matter anymore. It was finished, and life could move on. The joys of being a teacher's pet. Beck supposed, recounting the girl's immeasurable luck since transferring to Hollywood Arts.

"It's not like her to not show up to class." Beck lamented. "I think something's up.

Tori role her eyes, tossing a few pieces of hair behind her ear. "It's one day, Beck. Even the police as for at least forty-eight hours before you contact them. I think she'll be fine."

Beck wanted to retort. He wanted to make her understand that he knew Jade, knew that her absence was a thousand times worse than what it meant if she had show up and flaunted and made his life miserable. But before he could say any of it, Mr. Kerrick intoned, and the lesson began.

* * *

"Well I think it's a bad sign."

"What is?" Cat said, plopping down between Beck and Robbie and across from Andre and Tori at their regular lunch table.

Robbie opened his mouth to respond, but he was cut off by Rex before he could. "Beck thinks Jade's gone loopy." He chided, much to the dismay of Robbie.

Beck rolled his eyes, jamming his fork into another piece of lettuce. "I do not. I'm just saying, in all the time that you guys have known her, has she ever skipped school?" He defended. "It's not a good sign. I'm telling you."

Cat nodded without really knowing what she was agreeing to. "One time, my brother skipped school for a whole week because he thought that there was going to be a nuclear apocalypse if he walked outside." She chimed in airily, opening her container of noodles and tossing a few pieces around.

Her four friends stared at her for a moment before continuing on with their conversation.

"Andre, will you please tell Beck that this isn't a big deal?" Tori coaxed, nudging her friend gently in the forearm with her elbow.

Andre bit his lip briefly, his eyes flicking towards Beck's grieving glare. "I don't know, Tor." He hesitated. "It's just ... we've known her a lot longer than you, and ... Beck might have a point."

"Thank you!" Beck jeered, giving Tori a knowing grin.

Tori huffed before taking a bite of her burrito. "I don't know why you're even worried about her." She conceded between swallows. "She broke up with you."

There was a beat in the conversation. Robbie's eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets, Andre nearly choked on his soda, Cat let out a surprised squeak. Beck smiled falsely, dropping his fork and turning his tired eyes towards Tori. He didn't respond because he knew she was right, because it wasn't his place to worry about Jade anymore. She didn't owe him anything.

Not that he needed a reminder.

"But she's still our friend." Cat asked earnestly, breaking the silence. "... isn't she?"

Robbie place his arm warmly around her shoulders. "Of course she is." He said, before adding with a nervous smile, "... isn't she?"

Andre nodded firmly, Beck heaved a sigh, and Tori rolled her eyes before taking another bite of her burrito. Cat studied her friends briefly before nodding slowly and leaning into Robbie's embrace. Despite her seemingly vacant contribution to the group, she had learned that she was an incredibly good observer. She could tell when Robbie was going to ask her out. She could tell when her brother was going to have one of his fits, sometimes even before he could. Right now, there were two things that Cat was absolutely sure of:

1) They would never all hang out again

2) Something was definitely wrong with Jade

* * *

It was between fifth and sixth period when he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. Beck groaned as he pulled it out, expecting to see his suffocatingly doting mother's contact light up on his screen. Much to his surprise it wasn't her. The name on the screen made Beck's chest flutter. It was Jade.

"H-Hello?" He stuttered as he answered the phone as though all the wind had just been knocked out of him.

"Beck." Jade whimpered softly on the other end of the line, followed by a cacophony of glass breaking and incoherent shouts.

"Where are you?" He was already sprinting to the parking lot by the time he got his question out, his free hand rummaging manically for his car keys in one of his pockets.

She was crying softly on the other end, and Beck could practically feel her trying to swallow back tears. Even now, trying to appear stronger and braver than anyone expected her to be. "I'm ... I'm at home." Jade finally got out, "It's my ... my dad. He's - Oh god!" Another shriek, another eruption of noise and shouting, and the line went dead.

"Jade. Jade...?" Beck stared at his phone screen for a moment in other bewilderment. He felt like his heart was about to beat out of his chest. Beck shook his head. You don't have time. He told himself firmly, before getting in his car and speeding out of the Hollywood Arts parking lot.

He knew the drive like the back of his hand. Jade lived a fifteen minute drive from school, but with LA traffic it could be upwards of forty minutes. Luckily for Beck, there was hardly anyone on the road at 1:30 pm on a Tuesday. Beck pressed his foot on the gas, watching the speedometer hit fifty, the seventy, then eighty, but it still didn't feel fast enough. His mind reeled through the various situations he might find upon his arrival. He had only met her father a handful of times, but he knew him to be a solemn, oftentimes unnecessarily cruel man. Beck had heard him call his daughter names more than once, and he was no stranger to the bruises that had begun showing up on Jade's skin since her mother had left.

Beck heaved a sigh of relief when he finally pulled into Jade's driveway, parking haphazardly next to what she recognized to be his now ex-girlfriend's car. He felt something crunch beneath his feet when he exited his blue sedan, and looked down to see broken bottles strewn across the ground. Gingerly, he picked up a piece of the broken glass, but before he could examine what it was, there was a crash followed by a shriek from inside, and he went darting towards the porch, leaving the glass to fall forgotten into the gravel once more.

* * *

It had escalated quickly. From yelling, to being pushed against a wall, and at some point she heard him accuse her of leaving him. "Just like your bitch mom left us! You're just like her, Jadey." He had wailed, throwing books off of shelves and sobbing manically. "You're just like her!" Jade had tried to promise him that she wasn't going anywhere, had begged him to calm down and just ... just talk to her. To please just let her explain, but it fell on def ears.

It had escalated quickly, and then it had somehow managed to get worse.

Jade knew her father kept a gun in the house - a small revolver that he hid in a lockbox under his bed from the time she was two years old. She had only seen it a handful of times - when he was cleaning it, or when her uncle came over and wanted to shoot bottles off the back porch on Thanksgiving. One time when she was twelve they'd had an attempted burglary, and her father had come bounding into her room, shutting the door carefully, and camping out by her bed, training the gun directly at the door. She knew he knew how to use it. He had even begun to teach her before her mother left. "Just in case." He had said with a wink as she held the gun out and aimed at a target in her yard. At the time, she wrote it off as just another special skill she could put on her resume. She had wanted to have good aim on the first try. She hadn't. Her father, on the other hand, was, and it made it all the more terrifying when he pulled it out of his waistband and started waving it around, threatening to find her mother and kill her, then kill Jade, then kill himself.

For the first time in her life, Jade thanked a god she knew she didn't believe in that he was drunk, or else his first shot wouldn't have missed, and she would not have been able to hit the first number on her speed dial list as she bolted past him. The conversation was cut short, though, when he found her hiding in the closet by their front door and threw the phone across the room - shattering the screen into a million pieces.

"Dad, p-please!" She whimpered pathetically, backing through the living room and into the kitchen. "Please just, I didn't ... I didn't do anything! I- I would never leave. I promise, I would never-!" But he wasn't listening, was hardly breathing. This wasn't her father - this was a man she did not know, and who perhaps also did not know himself.

Jade felt the cool marble of her kitchen counter against her back, and the synapse in her brain went wild. A knife, get a fucking knife! It was as though he could read her mind, though, because as she started to turn on her heels to find one, he caught her by the shoulders, pressing her firmly against the counter and placed his grip around her neck. Jade brought her own hands to claw at his as she gasped for breath. Darkness closed in around her as she continued to fight for air, scratching at her fathers ands hands and forearms, silently pleading with him to let her go. Her father glared at her with eyes that she didn't recognize - dark, and vacant, burning with a despair she had yet to see in him.

"D-Dad!" She wheezed with her last fighting breath. Her tongue began protruding from her mouth, and her arms fell back on the table, and its as though her giving up brought her father back to reality, because she felt the pressure relieve off her larynx as her father snatched his hands back, wringing his wrists.

He stared at her with disbelief and maybe even remorse as his daughter slid down the kitchen counter, coughing, and wheezing, and delicately touching her neck for injuries. "Jadey ... I ..."

For a brief moment, Jade thought that maybe it was over. Maybe he had come back to reality. Maybe, just maybe, they could put this behind them and somehow try to move on and keep going. But the sound of the gravel rumbling under car tires outside made her ears prick, and apparently she wasn't alone. Michael West whipped around towards the sound, his hands coming to grip the gun on his waistband again. His body tensed as he turned back to leer at the girl who reminded him all too much of his former wife.

"Who did you call?" He asked desperately, pulling Jade off the ground roughly by her forearm. When he realized she was still too weak to fully stand, he placed an arm around her waist to support her and pushed her into the front hallway by the door. Jade felt it happen in a fog. I called pondered dumbly as oxygen slowly re-entered her system. Who did I call?

Her eyes widened when she saw the shock of brown hair come barreling through her front door. "Beck."

Beck froze for a moment when he heard her. Jade's voice was about three octaves higher than her usual tone. He took her in - lip cut, neck bruised, and a gash on her right cheek bone. Her father's left hand was firmly around her stomach, and his right, oh god. Beck thought he was going to be sick. A revolver, small and silver, and taunting him, placed roughly against her temple.

"Don't you hurt her." Beck growled, his hands balling into fists. "Don't you dare—" he lunged, and pain exploded on the left side of Jade's body as she was pushed to the ground. Before she could pull herself up there was a pop, and and guttural shriek, and a thud, and god Jade thought she knew what it was but she didn't want to be eyes flickered a few feet in front of her to where he lay, blood soaking his t-shirt, his eyes scrunched shut, his body coiled in on itself.

"N-no…" Jade breathed, scrambling on her knees to his side. She touched his cheek lightly, and it's as if it's all the permission his body needed to relax, because all of a sudden his eyelids fluttered and he went limp. "Beck!" Jade pulled him onto her knees, bringing a hand to run through his hair. The only response she got was a cough, and she watched in horror as blood dribbled from either corner of his mouth.

She snapped into action, rummaging through his pockets for a cellphone, and finally found one in his jeans. But when she pulled it out, she heard the gun cock and oh god. Slowly, she allowed her head to turn towards her father — pale, and sweaty, and tense, the barrel of the revolver trained directly between her eyebrows.

"You know. I can't let you use that, Jadey." He relented, and if she didn't know any better, she would've thought it was an apology. "You know I can't let you."

Jade watched as her father brought his finger to the trigger. Light danced across the silver mechanism, and in another life, she would have found it beautiful. She didn't cry, didn't fight. Just watched. Her grasp tightened around Beck's shirt, the gun twitched in her father's usually steady hands. Tears glistened in his bloodshot eyes, his chin trembled. But all Jade could do was watch.

"J-Jade…" Beck sputtered, pushing a little more of the blood and saliva mixture over his lower lip. "Run." His eyes fought to focus on her, his breath shallow, but there was fervency behind his words. It wasn't a suggestion, it was an order.

Jade shook her head, moaning lowly before burying her face in his neck. "I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry, Beck. I'm sorry, I'm—!" It came as a long, babbled string of apologies between sobs and sharp inhales. Beck wasn't sure he had ever seen her cry before, and with the little strength he had left, he silently thanked whatever powers that be for that, because he wasn't sure he could handle seeing it more than once. Jade shook violently as she continued to hold him, continued to press herself as close to him as she possibly could.

Beck brought a bloodstained finger up to her cheek and traced it lightly, and she looked at him. He chanced a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I never s-stopped …." But a fit of coughs overtook his thought, followed by an awful gurgling sound, and then ….

Jade shook him gently, whispered his name, ran her fingers through his hair, because he couldn't … he … he just couldn't … !

"How could you … how …" Jade griped for the right words, tears streaming freely down her cheeks as she whipped her head to meet her father's shock-stricken gaze. "He didn't do anything! He didn't—" she choked, pulling Beck closer and bawling and apologizing to him all over again.

Her father lowered the gun, his eyes bulging manically, his lips twitching at the corners like he wasn't sure if he wanted to smile or snarl or both. "I didn't … he … he shouldn't have come. It wasn't my …" He brought his free hand and pushed the sweat drenched hair on his forehead back. Then something snapped in him, something dark and sinister. Something he hadn't wanted to admit to himself.

"Don't look, Jadey." He murmured, turning his back to her.

But Jade was never known for doing what she was told, was she?

It happened fast, but not fast enough. She had only just turned back to him when the back of his skull spattered, and he crumpled on the hardwood floor with a smack. Jade shrieked and her eyes squeezed shut instinctively when she heard the bang of the bullet leaving the gun. Some dark, morbid part of her marveled at how such a small machine could make such a loud noise, but that was before she had fully registered what her father had just done. Slowly, she opened her eyes and flicked them from her father's now grotesque form, to Beck in her arms. Sweet Beck, his eyes glaring at her unseeing, his lips opened slightly. She couldn't cry anymore. She could barely feel anything at all. She just knelt there, Beck's dead weight against her knees. Sickly, deafening silence permeated the her house. It swallowed her whole, voided her of all thoughts and emotions.

She wasn't sure how long she stayed like that — long enough for her knees to start to ache and the sun to settle into a soft evening glow against the walls of her house. Long enough for Beck to grow cold. She didn't think about time, not until she heard sirens outside, followed by the crackling of her front door being broken down. A team of police officers lead by — who the fuck else — none other than Officer David Vega appeared in her doorway, guns pointed in every which way. Tori's father had been on a thousand crime scenes — some gorier than this, but none where he had known the victims. Jade stayed at the center of the room, still as the house around her. She seemed not to notice the commotion beginning until he placed a hand on her shoulder. Jade flinched slightly at the contact, but otherwise remained stagnant.

She didn't need to look at him to know that he was watching her with the same kind brown eyes that Tori studied her with — the same pitiful expression that Tori had given Jade that day after her and Beck had broken up. She knew it was there, and it made her sick. She vaguely heard him offer to help her up, but it only made her grip on Beck's shirt tighten.

"Jade," Officer Vega coaxed gently, "we have to get his …" he shook his head, "you've sustained injuries. We need to get you to a hospital, make sure you're ok."

The dark haired girl grit her teeth ruefully, keeping her eyes trained on the same spot on the wall, "I'm fine." She said dully, continuing to cradle the lifeless boy in her arms.

Officer Vega sighed and knelt next to her, removing his police hat. "Jade. I am … so sorry." He tried, only succeeding to make the muscles in her jaw clench harder. "But … you can't stay here. We have to get you someplace — somewhere else."

Rage flashed behind her blue green eyes, but it only lingered a moment before it was replaced with pain, and then nothing, vacancy, resignation. Jade exhaled heavily before looking down at Beck - the boy she loved. The boy she would always love. She leaned down and kissed his forehead, murmuring something that Officer Vega couldn't hear — that wasn't for him to hear. Her eyes met his — steady and turbulent and so full of fear all at the same time.

"What do I do now?" She asked with such honesty and sorrow that the officer hardly recognized the determined girl he'd met on his living room couch not two years prior.

Officer Vega pursed his lips, then shook his head as though deciding against whatever half-hearted positive notion he was about to share. He stood slowly, reaching a calloused hand out towards the teenager. Jade looked up at his hand, then back at Beck. She laid he head delicately against the linoleum floor, and then, much to Officer Vega's surprise, took his outstretched hand. She stood with some difficulty, for her knees were stiff from hours of kneeling with the pressure of his body against her. It wasn't until she was upright that she realized her lower half was soaked in a sticky, metallic substance. Jade wiped a line of the liquid off her thigh. Blood. Not just any blood.

Beck's blood.

Officer Vega watched her go pale, then green, and then sprint to the door. He cringed as he listened to her retch over the balcony of her front porch, then followed her and placed a hand lightly on her back. When she finished, she pulled herself back upright, breathing heavily as she wiped the last of her sick from the corner of her mouth. The officer rummaged in his pockets for a napkin or a tissue — anything he could give her to help, but to no avail. They stood there for a moment, her leaning against the porch while she tried to stop her body from shaking, him watching steadfastly.

"Feel better?" He offered, hating himself almost immediately for asking something so … so stupid. Jade just looked at him, her face contorted with a mixture of nausea and grief, before breezing past him in the direction of the ambulance.


End file.
